Japan charters plane to deport 70 Filipinos on the cheap

The government chartered a plane to deport 70 Filipinos on Saturday who overstayed their visas, allowing it to avoid the huge expense of deporting them individually, sources said.

The Filipinos, who had been held at detention facilities run by the Immigration Bureau, were flown to Manila, the sources said.

According to the Immigration Bureau, Japan used to issue written deportation orders requiring people living here illegally to return home at their own expense by air or sea. The travel expenses of those who refused were footed by the government and included the cost of an immigration official escort.

In some cases, deportees behaved so violently that airlines refused to board them.

The ministry thus decided it would be cheaper and cause less inconvenience to the public to charter aircraft to deport foreigners en masse instead of individually, the sources said.

The ministry has set aside ¥30 million for the tactic, which has also been used in Europe, in the fiscal 2013 budget, they added.

According to the bureau, there were 62,000 people living in Japan illegally as of January and 5,700 were Filipinos.

This is a similar process used by the U.S. to deport Mexicans:. By the plane-load (keeping in detention meanwhile)…even though the U.S. complains that even this method is expensive, and there have been cut-backs (using bus to return them to the border).

Of course a certain percentage of them will always attempt to cross the border again, but it’s getting more difficult in recent years.

Osaka48

BTW…how does Japan know that there are 62,000 people living “illegally” there?
It’s just an estimation?
This is an amazing figure considering that the U.S. Los Angeles has many millions of illegal aliens…and the Los Angeles government extends many protections to them (they sympathize).

DNALeri

Everything is computerized. They know how many entered Japan and how many did not leave after the 3 month (or whatever) visa expired. Of course, there might be some who entered illegally, in addition.